Dota 2 uses terrain height in a unique way: depending on the distance, it can cause attacks to miss, provide a vision advantage, or in this case, trap an enemy player on a cliff for a long, long time.

In the winner’s finals of the CIS regional qualifiers for the Kiev Major, Virtus.pro and Team Empire were on match point. Empire’s Andrey “Ghostik” Kadyk went diving for VP’s captain and support, Alexei “Solo” Berezin, apparently forgetting the core mechanics of Berezin’s character, Rubick. One of Rubick’s abilities, Telekinesis, allows him to lift an enemy and then drop them. Berezin uses this skill to drop Kadyk on a cliff, where he cannot come down from.

At this point, Kadyk would be an easy kill, but Virtus.pro toys with Kadyk; after all, a kill would only take him out of the game for half a minute or so. The easiest method of escape for Kadyk would be a teleportation scroll, a basic item that lets you teleport across the map to any allied building, but he wasn’t carrying one when he got trapped. Leaving him on the cliff, with no teleport scroll to escape, means he has to bring a scroll to himself using the team’s courier.

Virtus.pro continues to pressure the map, while Berezin zones out the courier attempting to make its way to Kadyk. Once it gets there, Berezin kills it. Later, one of Empire’s supports sneaks in to deliver a scroll to Kadyk, and VP’s other support, Ilya “Lil” Ilyuk cancels Kadyk’s escape with a stun from his controlled Centaur. Basically, Virtus.pro devoted one-and-a-half players to torturing the poor Night Stalker.

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Ruining Kadyk’s day turned out to be a winning strategy, as Virtus.pro advanced 2-1 to the grand finals, one series away from qualifying for the Kiev Major. At the time of writing, Team Empire are currently playing Natus Vincere in the loser’s bracket, where it will try to earn a second shot at VP. Maybe next time Kadyk will remember the number one rule of Dota: always carry a TP scroll.